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Spring

Spring seems to have spring with the snowdrops gone and daffodils everywhere; the sun is beating into the kitchen and i 'm having trouble keeping Ralph off the cool marble table. There’re countless places you could go and snooze but he is just like a little dog and follows me everywhere. He is also very assertive in getting his needs met for cuddles and laps.

We have to think about house zoning as he cam on the bed with his rubber ball at about 3 o’clock this morning wanting to play.

Times seem faintly surreal at the moment. I thought this poem was a good one.Though I don’t read much poetry I got this on Instagram and it seemed to say something in the way that poetry does:

One Art

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I went to my second Pilates lesson which went well; it definitely get some of the muscles working and I think will do my body good in trying to repair all the surgery. Perseverance is key but I don’t seem to have a lot.

And i’m blind as a bat; the huge steroid doses they give you affect your vision an the immune suppressants blur your vision so it is really difficult to read and write; if this is full of typos that’s why. I do have any eye test booked but not for another couple of weeks; nothing happens fast up here.

I go back to Papworth next week for the usual monitoring as well as an echocardiogram and potentially another bronchoscopy and a CT scan to see how my pseudonomas colony is doing.

I’ve managed a few flower paintings:

.....and at the weekend I sold the nice slipware and pear painting at my modest exhibition at Richard Scott Antiques which is very pleasing.

I'll leave you with these beautiful flower paintings by Winifred Nicholson:

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